May 2026 – Design, hospitality and culture are reshaping the workplace into somewhere people genuinely want to be.
As hybrid work continues to reshape the relationship between people and place, workplace design is entering a more human-centred era shaped by hospitality, culture and connection. At Melbourne Design Week, Communications Collective Founder and Director Genevieve Brannigan sat down with leading voices from design, architecture and property to explore how workplaces are evolving beyond function into destinations people genuinely want to experience.
Held at Invicta House, an adaptive reuse workplace by ST Real Estate and Plus Studio, with hospitality venues including Ministry of Crab and Restaurant 226 at street level by AIR Design Studio, the discussion examined how today’s most compelling workplaces foster creativity, identity and belonging. Brannigan was joined by Giovanni Susta, Deputy General Manager of ST Real Estate, Janine Kariyawasam, Head of Design at AIR Design Studio, Ian Briggs, Director at Plus Studio, and Adèle Winteridge, Founder and Design Director of Foolscap.
Below, the panel explores the future of hybrid work, from ‘earning the commute’ to the growing role of hospitality, adaptive reuse and human connection in shaping the workplace of tomorrow.
Genevieve Brannigan: Adèle, you’ve used the phrase ‘earning the commute’. Can you explain what that means and why it’s become such an important consideration right now?
Adèle Winteridge: The phrase really emerged out of COVID, when people became used to the convenience of working from home. Since then, the question has become: what actually brings people back?
For us, it comes down to creating environments that offer something people cannot get at home. That may be hospitality, atmosphere, programming, wellness, acoustic comfort or simply the ability to connect with other people in a meaningful way.
Ultimately, people bring people back to work. The role of design is to create the conditions for that to happen, whether that is through spaces where people can gather, spaces where they can step away or moments that make the workplace feel more generous than the home environment.
Genevieve Brannigan: The Financial Times recently observed that employers are increasingly focused on meaningful in-person collaboration, rather than simply enforcing office mandates. Ian, why do informal moments and learning through proximity still matter, and how is Plus designing workplaces to support them?
Ian Briggs: Technology has made it easy to question whether people need to come into the city or the office at all. But there are parts of work that simply do not translate well to a screen.
Learning by proximity is a big part of that, particularly for younger people. Working near someone with more experience, hearing how they speak to clients or seeing how they solve problems is incredibly valuable.
The workplace now has to support those moments. It is not enough for a building to look impressive. The question is whether people want to stay in the space, spend time there, meet others there and feel part of something.
Genevieve Brannigan: Janine, one of the areas you specialise in is hospitality precincts. How do anchor hospitality tenants such as Ministry of Crab at Invicta House help activate buildings and the broader precinct?
Janine Kariyawasam: Hospitality connects to the whole day of the person using the building. Someone may start with coffee, meet a colleague, go upstairs to work, come back down for lunch or meet a friend for dinner later.
At Invicta House, venues such as Ministry of Crab and Restaurant 226 help make the building feel connected to the city rather than separate from it. They create reasons for people to arrive earlier, stay longer and use the building in more than one way.
You can’t really look at the café, restaurant or workplace separately. You must think about the full experience of one person moving through their day. That’s where hospitality can do a lot of work. The venue itself needs to support the broader experience of the workplace and the precinct.
Genevieve Brannigan: It feels like hospitality is becoming central to identity and value within commercial buildings. How has hospitality design become part of attracting people back into workplaces? Are workplaces now having to think more like hospitality spaces, designing for mood, energy and memory as much as function?
Adèle Winteridge: Workplaces are definitely becoming much more layered. We’re creating an environment people actively want to spend time in.
The Commons is a good example of that shift. Across its co-working environments, the offer extends well beyond the desk to include hospitality, wellness, programming, acoustics and the smaller services that support someone’s day. There is always a sense of activity and care around the workplace experience.
We are seeing workspaces become much more connected to lifestyle. When you start adding things like health clubs, sensory rooms, hospitality, laundry services or other forms of amenity, the workplace becomes part of someone’s broader routine instead of simply a place to complete tasks.
Janine Kariyawasam: Hospitality also creates memory. People remember how a place makes them feel, the welcome, the energy, the food, the lighting, the atmosphere and the way they move through it.
Workplaces now are competing with the convenience of working at home, with cafés, with hotels and with the broader city. Hospitality helps create the emotional pull that makes people want to return.
Genevieve Brannigan: Giovanni, adaptive reuse projects like Invicta House require patience, long-term thinking and a belief in the value of existing city fabric. What drew ST Real Estate to this kind of project?
Giovanni Susta: For us, patience and long-term value are part of the philosophy. We are thinking about buildings over decades, not just in terms of short term return.
Invicta House was originally a factory, so the question was how to give an existing building another life for the next 30 years. That is very different to simply delivering a new building and moving on.
There is also a sustainability argument. The greenest building is often the one already standing. Beyond sustainability, it is about preserving the identity of the city. Melbourne has laneway culture, street culture and a strong sense of place. Buildings like this contribute to that. They make the city feel different instead of standardised.
Genevieve Brannigan: Increasingly, people seem to want workplaces connected to hospitality, culture, transport and everyday city life rather than isolated office towers. How important is that broader precinct experience when thinking about long-term value?
Giovanni Susta: It is very important, because tenants are no longer just renting space. They are looking for an experience and, in some ways, a home for their culture.
That means thinking about what sits around the workplace, proximity to transport, connectivity, public space and the wider street experience. If a building does not offer that kind of broader value, it becomes harder to attract people and harder to keep them engaged over time.
From our perspective, real estate operators need to think differently. We are helping create an environment that supports how people want to work, meet, gather and spend time in the city.
Genevieve Brannigan: Younger generations seem to have very different expectations of physical workplaces around flexibility, atmosphere, wellness and social connection. How is that changing the way workplaces are being designed and experienced?
Giovanni Susta: I don’t think younger generations are less interested in cities or public spaces. In many ways, they are looking for more reasons to engage with them.
They want places where they can connect, learn, grow and be part of something. Many younger people began their working lives during or around COVID, so the opportunity to be around others and develop professionally still matters.
But the workplace offer has to be different. Wellness, hospitality, flexibility, atmosphere and culture are becoming much more important. The city is still attractive, but it needs to offer more than a desk.
Ian Briggs: There has also been a shift away from older workplace hierarchies. Traditionally, the best spaces were often reserved for senior people, while everyone else worked in the middle.
Now, the shared spaces, communal areas and collaborative environments are often the most important parts of the workplace. They need to be available to everyone, because that is where culture, learning and exchange happen.
Genevieve Brannigan: Ian, increasingly the most successful workplaces are borrowing ideas from other sectors to create environments people actively choose to be part of. Invicta House integrates hospitality directly into the arrival experience. Why was that important to the project?
Ian Briggs: The work environment does not start at the lift or the office floor anymore. It starts at the threshold between the street and the building.
At Invicta House, that was an important part of the thinking. The ground plane is not just a lobby or a passageway. It is part of the cultural statement of the building. It is where the public realm, hospitality, arrival experience and workplace begin to overlap.
That threshold can change the whole experience of coming to work. It can make a building feel more open, more connected and more active before someone even reaches their desk. Increasingly, those interstitial spaces are becoming an extension of the workplace itself.
Genevieve Brannigan: Adèle, you’ve said “the ground plane is vital”. What role does hospitality at street level play in shaping the identity and success of a building?
Adèle Winteridge: The ground plane is often the identity of the building. People may not know what is happening on every level above, but they remember what is happening at street level.
Hospitality plays a big role in that because it creates energy, activity and a sense of welcome. It changes the way people arrive, the way they gather and the way the building connects to the public realm.
Genevieve Brannigan: At the same moment AI is accelerating digital work, we’re also seeing renewed interest in physical gathering and human connection. Do you think future workplaces will increasingly be designed around creativity rather than productivity alone?
Ian Briggs: I think so. AI will change the way we work, and there are clearly tasks that technology will replace or enhance. But creative thinking remains a very human skill.
The ability to bring unrelated ideas together, to think in unexpected ways and to create something new is still difficult to replicate. Those moments often happen through conversation, proximity and exchange.
That means the future workplace may become less about task completion and more about the kinds of work that benefit from people being together. Spaces that support creativity, collaboration and human connection will become more important.
Genevieve Brannigan: As expectations of the office continue to evolve, what should workplaces move away from, and what should they be doing instead?
Giovanni Susta: The old model of simply renting space is no longer enough. Tenants are looking for an experience, a level of service and a sense of belonging that supports their culture.
Workplaces need to start thinking more holistically about the services, amenities and connections they provide, because that is what gives people a reason to choose them.
Ian Briggs: Designing for one narrow idea of the worker is where workplaces fall short. The best environments need to welcome different ways of thinking and working, including neurodiverse needs.
They need to start offering more choice, places for focus, places for connection and places where different people can feel comfortable working in different ways.
Adèle Winteridge: A building cannot be treated as static. It needs to be operated, programmed and considered as part of a precinct, with flexibility, service and choice built into the experience.
Workplaces need to start thinking more about how they are activated over time, not just how they look on day one.
Janine Kariyawasam: The workplace cannot only be understood by its own floor plate. What surrounds it matters too, including where people can meet, get coffee, have lunch or continue conversations beyond the office itself.
Workplaces need to start considering the full day someone has when they come in, and how the building connects into the hospitality, retail and street life around it.
This article originally featured in Australian Design Review.
